Day Nine Recap

“The problem is not that there are problems, the problem is expecting otherwise and thinking that having problems is a problem.”
~Theodore Rubin

We checked out of the lovely and gracious accommodations of Recapture Lodge at 10:30 am and headed into The Valley of the Gods–finally! This destination was one of the ones that we’ve been looking forward to ever since we started planning this trip 15 months ago. Unfortunately, Utah is having an unusually hot spell of weather and the upcoming days are all expected to be in the 100s. So, intrepid travelers that we are, we took a ton of water and bravely set out.

As soon as we entered the area controlled by the Bureau of Land Management we were awed. The setting is wild and beautiful and harsh and picturesque. Red sand hills, giant rocks perched precariously at great heights. It was majestic and moving and soul-expanding. It really does feel like a special, spiritual place. I’m probably going to have a lot more pictures than text for the next few days.

I will say that as beautiful as it was, it was beastly hot. I think we hit 98 air temp, which doesn’t take into account the radiant heat from hot rocks, the hot wind that never ceased (as long as the sun was up), or the greenhouse effect inside the trailer, and no shade unless we made it ourselves. There really was no place to escape it. We were drinking water constantly and yet the air was so dry we couldn’t even feel ourselves sweat.

We struggled to set up the awnings in the wind and ended up using lots of rocks around the base of the poles to help keep everything in place. It was a little hard to stake them, but we did that, too. The substrate was either rocks or sand and neither one is great for driving in or retaining stakes.

With the super high temperatures, we were also having trouble keeping the fridge/freezer going without draining the deep-cycle battery. Len kept moving the extra, portable solar panel to catch the best sun angle for maximum capture. We decided to remove the freezer compartment and just make the whole thing a fridge to keep from sucking so much energy. That also meant that our freezer stuff would start to thaw, so we

did a quick assessment about what we could stand to lose if they thawed and wouldn’t keep until we ate them. So we pulled out the four bacon-wrapped filets so they wouldn’t go bad. As the sun went down (yes, finally, thank the valley gods–site-appropriate term) we decided to put the awnings away so we wouldn’t have that to worry about while sleeping if the wind kept

howling. Fortunately, the wind died down, the air cooled, the crickets came out to serenade us, we pulled out the stove and cooked up our dinner: epic views, filet mignon, and red wine. Bummer, right?